System Thinking and Scenarios

In this paper I want to describe yet another way of developing and using scenarios. This way is probably not completely new, it uses many concepts from scenario-planning and system-thinking. It tries to merge both "languages" and by doin so it tries to convert the perceived dilemmas between the different approaches of scenario-planning into paradoxes.

There is no one best way to make or use scenarios. Within the GBN-community scenarios are build inductively, where first the ingredients of stories are gathered to be clustered into stories later. Scenarios are also build deductively, where first the key-uncertainties are selected to make up a scenario-matrix, which in turn is being "filled" with the ingredients that make up the scenarios. Scenarios are used by most to explore the contextual environment, which by definition cannot be influenced. Others use scenarios normatively, as carrots and sticks to move an organisation towards a preferred future. There are probably even more ways to describe the ways in which scenarios are constructed and made useful within GBN world-wide.

If we look at these approaches they all agree that scenarios are stories about the future which consist of certain ingredients which need to fit together in an internal consistent way. They also point out that an organisation needs to look at the relation between itself and its environment.

Driving forces are probably the most important ingredients for scenarios. Both Daimler-Benz and Siemens Nixdorf have made the identification and description of driving forces into an art of itself. The nice thing about well described driving forces is that they are easily reusable from one scenario-exercise to another, at least more so than the scenarios themselves. Daimler-Benz therefor makes special booklets about driving forces. Siemens Nixdorf has experimented with a special framework to describe driving forces. This framework consist of a description of what the driving forces is, why it is happening, what enables it, what inhibits is, what paradigm fits with it, how predictable it is, how well it can be influenced by the organisation and what time-scale goes with it. Conversations with people within and outside the organisation are needed to be able to build a good database like this. Using real newspaper headings, or imagined future ones, can help to identify the relevant patterns.

Causal loop diagramming, for instance based on cross-impact analyses, are probably the most solid approach to see how these driving forces cohere. Of course, more than one map can be made to show how these forces fit together, with each map describing a different perspective of the world. There are several ways to build these models, or maps, in groups. Using the systems-archetypes the collective behaviour of the forces can be easily understood, giving often new and surprising insights. Since these maps entail both forces which can be influenced and those which can’t, it shows a rich picture of what is external to the organisation and what isn’t. Here deciding what is external and what is internal is left to be discussed at the end of the process rather than at the beginning. This should be easier at the end, since only then the leverages in the system have been distinguished.

These maps are often not easily remembered or transferable to those have not been part of the "mapping". Therefore, vivid narratives need to be developed. These narratives can either highlight the possible future development of forces which cannot be influenced by the organisation, or they can highlight the possible future development of forces which can. Both can be generated using the same material. In this way one can be pragmatic over the decision to use one kind of narrative over the other.